New faces, but Bruins still boast solid penalty kill

Friday

Oct 11, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Bud Barth, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

BOSTON — Despite losing two of the players who helped make it work last season — Rich Peverley and Andrew Ference — the Bruins' penalty-killing appears to be as strong as ever. Through their first two games, the Bruins killed off all seven enemy power plays while scoring two short-handed goals.

They allowed their first power-play goal to Colorado on Thursday night, but have killed off 10 of 11 short-handed situations in all.

Boston was fourth in the NHL last season with an 87.1 percent penalty-killing rate, which was important considering its power play was so poor (14.8 percent, tied for 25th in the league).

If the power play improves — and there are some signs of that after three games (2 for 10) — the combination of some shutdown penalty-killing and a strong extra-man advantage would make the Bruins truly fearsome. They already are one of the top five-on-five teams in the league.

Peverley, who was traded to Dallas in the Tyler Seguin-Loui Eriksson deal, was a superb penalty-killing partner of linemate Chris Kelly for the last 2½ seasons. His role as a penalty-killer has been taken by Eriksson. Patrice Bergeron-Brad Marchand and Gregory Campbell-Daniel Paille make up Julien's other PK pairs up front.

"I think it's fun to kill penalties," said Eriksson, who also filled that role in Dallas. "I always want to play as much as I can."

On defense, Adam McQuaid has moved into Ference's spot on defense while killing penalties, joining Zdeno Chara, Dennis Seidenberg and Johnny Boychuk.

"It's such an important part of the game," McQuaid said. "It can be the difference between winning and losing games at times."

Suddenly losing faceoffs

The Bruins are off to a slow start in the faceoff circle after leading the NHL in that category two years in a row — 56.4 percent last season, 54.5 percent in 2011-12.

Through the first two games, they are 64-65 (49.6 percent). The figure was dragged down by the Red Wings, who had a 32-25 edge in draws last Saturday night. Julien thinks that may be due to an unfamiliarity with Detroit, which played in the Western Conference before this season.

The loss of Peverley, who was one of the league leaders in faceoffs, hasn't helped.

"When you look at some of the situations like last game with Bergie (Bergeron) and (Pavel) Datsyuk, when you don't know the other teams' players as well — which we will with time — things will get better."

Datsyuk won 8 of 12 draws against Bergeron, who was the best faceoff man in the NHL last season.

Julien to call on Bartkowski

Defenseman Matt Bartkowski won't be watching games from the press box for long, Julien promised. Right now, the 25-year-old is the team's seventh defenseman, but he led the team in scoring in preseason with seven points (all assists) and had some truly brilliant moments.

Bartkowski vastly outplayed Dougie Hamilton during preseason, yet the Bruins opted to start the season with Hamilton. Part of the reason could be that he's a former first-round draft pick, but it also might have something to do with him being a right-handed shot, something in short supply along Boston's blue line (McQuaid and Boychuk are the only others). Julien is big on using left-right pairs, although he breaks that rule when he puts Chara and Seidenberg together, mostly in the postseason.

Bear Facts

Carl Soderberg (ankle), who has yet to play in the regular season, has been skating on his own and is expected to begin practicing with the team today, Julien said. When he returns, the Bruins will have to sit another forward, probably Jordan Caron. ... The Avalanche came into Thursday night's game at 3-0, their best start since the franchise moved to Denver in 1995. As the Quebec Nordiques, they had four starts of at least 3-0. ... Rask and Colorado's Semyon Varlamov came into the game having allowed only one goal in each start. Rask had stopped 57 of 59 shots (.968), while Varlamov had stopped 88 of 91 (.967). Varlamov, though, sat out as backup Jean-Sebastien Giguere got the call to face the Bruins. ... The Avs have won six straight games at TD Garden. They are 7-0-1 in their last eight visits here, their last loss coming in March 1998. ... The Bruins play two straight matinees on this Columbus Day weekend — at Columbus at 2 p.m. Saturday, and home versus Detroit at 1 p.m. Monday.